Poultry is one of the most economic and nutritious meats available. One of the principal reasons that chicken is so economical is because chicken farmers and processors have a very orderly and organized production plan and program that is highly efficient.
Typically chickens, referred to as broilers, are raised by farmers who in turn have a contract with the large poultry or broiler processor. Generally, small chickens are furnished the farmer by a processor and the farmer manages the feeding and raising of the chickens from small chicks to appropriate broiler size. Ordinarily, the period of raising small chicks to a full grown broiler ready for processing is approximately seven weeks.
One very important key in making broiler production profitable for both the farmer and the processor and for keeping poultry costs relatively inexpensive, is to minimize the time the chicken house remains empty between flocks. Obviously, the more chickens that can be raised for a given time in a certain house, the more profitable the operation.
In the past the real problem in providing a short turn around time between flocks has been the inability to clean and ready the chicken house for the next flock in an expeditious manner. Much valuable time has traditionally been lost in cleaning the manure from the chicken house because it has ordinarily been done manually by hand and shovel. With labor often being in short supply and the nature of this particular job being what it is, this too has added to the difficulty of getting the chicken houses clean in a quick and efficient manner.
Moreover, the cleaning of a chicken house usually has resulted in the entire litter being disposed of. This is because when the house is cleaned by manual labor, there is no practical way to efficiently and by cost effective means to separate reusable litter from the caked manure. Thus, under conventional practices the caked manure and associated litter are removed by hand. Thereafter, a new bed of litter is spread over the floor prior to the new flock of chickens being introduced into the house.
Therefore, there has always been a need for an automatic manure handling system that could be used in the inside of a chicken house to clean the same between flocks.
There has been some prior efforts to automatically clean chicken houses. For example, there has been used a tractor pulled manure scraping and cleaning machine. This machine included a blade and an elevator assembly on a single front mobile frame. The mobile frame supporting the pickup and elevator was in turn attached to a separate trailing trailer. While this machine would pick up manure and transfer it into the trailing trailer it was far from satisfactory.
First, the front mobile frame and the trailing trailer could not be effectively maneuvered within the close confines of a chicken house. Maneuverability has always been one of the most difficult problems to deal with in designing and developing an efficient and practical in-house chicken manure cleaning machine.
Next, the machine was basically designed to pick up manure and did not in reality deal with picking up and reconditioning the litter. Most, if not substantially all, of the litter passed between the blade and the conveyor. In short, the machine was not designed to pick up a layer of caked manure and litter and to direct substantially all of the layer of manure/litter onto an elevator having a positively driven shaker assembly for separating the litter from the manure and returning the litter through the conveyor back to the floor.